AB7E Tower and Antenna Installation
I've been an amateur radio operator
for over 40 years and for various reasons had never been able to put up
a real tower with directional antennas. I've always had to use
verticals or dipoles hung from skinny poles, and while I've always
enjoyed DXing and contesting with these simple antennas I've also
envied the many hams with aluminum in the sky. I am now retired
and living in an area where a tower is more practical, so with a bit of
supportive urging from my wife I decided to install a heavy duty
freestanding tower and put a decent HF tribander and a 2 element 40m
yagi on it. My eventual hardware selection was:
Tower
AN Wireless HD-70 (a
heavy duty 70' freestanding tower)
Mast
21 foot chrome moly, 2
inch diameter
Rotator
Prosistel PST-61D
20m/15m/10m
OptiBeam OB16-3 (4 elements on 20m, 4 elements on
15m, 8 elements on 10m)
40m
OptiBeam OB2-40 (2 coil-shortened elements)
80m
wire Inverted-V
160m
wire Inverted-V
feedline 1/2 inch Heliax
Tower Pictures
Antenna Pictures